Distress And Despair Excerpt from interview with Professor Michael Marrus Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto December 12, 1997, Jerusalem Interviewers: Adi Gordon, Amos Morris Reich, Amos Goldberg Q- If one reads the diaries of people like Chaim Kaplan, Emanuel Ringelblum and Calel Perechodnik, one gets the impression of a lot of despair, which is not stressed enough in Holocaust research and memory. We get the image that, even though they lived under horrible conditions, they still somehow managed to survive, to have a cultural life, and even to flourish. A- There may be an illusion here, because, after all, we are reading the works of those who were able to garner enough strength and resources to put something on paper. Most people did not put anything on paper, and many did sink. Let us not forget this, as we stand in respect and awe of those who were able, even momentarily, to rise above terrible conditions and deprivation and to leave us some expression of creativity. Many simply sank into despair, passivity, and oblivion in the end, and perished – died of starvation, without, for example, having these kinds of creative moments or interludes. If we read these diaries attentively – say, from Kaplan to Perechodnik – there is quite a range of expression and of reaction. I am impressed by this range and by the way in which people were sometimes able to find moments to think of something other than the horrors that they saw all around them. But this was not a fair selection of the entire gamut of the Jewish experience, because many were not able to express themselves at all. Q- How would you define the social relationships in the ghettos (both large and small), taking into consideration the extreme tension between the poor and the so-called rich, the neglect of the deportees crowded into the ghettos. Yet on the other hand, the opposite existed, in the form of “self-help” groups, __________________________________________________________________________ 1/2 Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies mass kitchens, and other such frameworks. A- It is very important that we not romanticize the circumstances of the Jews in the ghettos. It's a challenge for those of us who studied the Holocaust more generally. It is vital to acknowledge that there was extraordinary diversity and a range of activity. One must appreciate that not only was there solidarity, collective aspiration and communal activity, but there were also divisions. There were class divisions as well as national divisions, which is to say, German Jews packed into ghettos where formerly Polish Jews had been concentrated together. There were the newly uprooted versus the longer- established Jews in these ghettoized environments and in the camps. We shouldn't assume that all of these Jews acted harmoniously together. These were ordinary people without any preparation whatsoever for the catastrophic circumstances they faced. So there were ordinary, petty human jealousies, and hatreds, rivalries and envy, together with the most noble of human aspirations – all mixed in together. Source: The Multimedia CD ‘Eclipse Of Humanity’, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2000. __________________________________________________________________________ 2/2 Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies .